


Investigations into a Forgotten Apocalypse

by voidknight



Category: Kirby (Video Games), Kirby - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Planet, Climate Change, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Science, an attempt at scientific accuracy was made, musings on identity and culture and such
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 10:56:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19108246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidknight/pseuds/voidknight
Summary: Adeleine and her friends visit Shiver Star.





	Investigations into a Forgotten Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the fantastic environmental earth science class i took this year!

You don’t quite remember the context in which you first heard the word “human.” You suppose that means it wasn’t important—some sort of casual comment, a pointed finger or brandished arm singling you out. It’s just what you’ve always been told— _ ah, you’re a human, _ a matter-of-fact statement from a creature or two who like to show off their adeptness at alien classification.  _ You don’t see a lot of those around. _

Still, it was interesting you even  _ had _ a species at all. You’d assumed you were like, say, Paint Roller. No one asked him if he was one of many Paint Rollers—what need was there? Some people, like Bandana Dee, were part of a larger group of nearly-identical beings. And some were truly unique.

Granted, you had once questioned Paint Roller as to his origin, back in the days when you studied under him, and he’d just shrugged and said something along the lines of “guess I’m from somewhere around here,” and that was good enough for you. Just as there weren’t more Paint Rollers running (skating?) around Popstar, brandishing their brushes at any who dared interrupt their careful work, there weren’t any more Adeleines. So—when you finally connected “human” with “species,” you suppose you must’ve been a little surprised at the implication that there were more like you out there. Then again, you’d never put much thought into it. You’d never met another human, so as far as you were concerned, the classification didn’t really matter.

So it surprises you when Kirby approaches you with a question.

Today, it’s not an offer of adventure, a note from a friend, an invitation for a picnic, or anything else that you’ve come to expect from the appearance of the little puffball. Today, his face has a curious gaze, as if he’s not sure how to bring up his request. He doesn’t even start with a cheery “hi!” —simply stares, hesitant for a reason you’re not even sure he knows.

“Ado,” he begins, quietly, “You’re a human, right?”

The word sounds strange in his voice, as if he’s not quite sure how to say it. He’s not incorrect, but it feels othering, in a way.

“Yeah?”

“Um, I found… something I thought you might like.”

Kirby holds up what looks like a tattered book, warped as if it’s been left out in the rain one too many times. Its pages are faded, and any ink that once formed words has smudged beyond legibility, but the title, at least, is visible:  _ Humans, _ written in one of the more common languages found on Planet Popstar. He leafs through it—quite a few pages are stuck together, and most images are blobs of color. But one, near the beginning, catches your eye, and Kirby holds it up to you—a blue and green planet as seen from space. Its continents are unmistakable.

“Look!” your friend chirps. “It’s Shiver Star!”

You blink. Kirby elaborates, connecting the dots that your brain has slowly begun to process.

“It’s a book about humans! I think that this is talking about where they come from. And it looks just like Shiver Star!”

You take the book and hold it close to your face, as if that’ll help convince you. “Shiver Star’s all frozen.”

“But it’s the same shape!”

“I don’t think I come from there,” you say, as if you had any way of knowing. Your earliest memories are blurry, but you’ve got no reason to believe the events didn’t take place on Popstar.

“Okay, but maybe there are more humans there!”

“Did you see any when we visited with Ribbon?”

You’ve got him there. Kirby frowns, deep in thought, then slowly shakes his head. “Maybe they all left. A frozen planet doesn’t sound too fun to live on!”

It’s a possibility. You take another look at the picture in the book in front of you—a blue and green planet, grey masses of cloud scattered here and there. Nothing like the pure white ice of Shiver Star.

“Do you know what happened to it?”

Kirby just shrugs. After all, the text is unreadable.

“Maybe… we could go there and find out?”

The suggestion, inexplicably, twists your stomach into a knot. Is it because of some deep-seated fear of your worldview being shattered? The idea that ignorance is bliss, that something you might find on Shiver Star could spell out the destruction of your race, or something equally horrific? The unwillingness to admit you aren’t a unique being?

Whatever the case, you’re not ready to admit to cowardice, especially not in front of Kirby. So you stand as tall as you can and say, “Sure!”

*

As the Warp Star approaches the planet, a sense of nostalgia comes over you—something reminding you of the last time you visited this place, gathering up Crystal Shards and aiding Kirby as he dutifully trekked through the beautiful snowy landscape. The outlines of continents are eerily similar to the map in your book—though it’s not without its differences, too. Shiver Star seems to have more ocean than land, as if big chunks have been eaten out of some of the landmasses, or deep trenches carved through gigantic continents. One peninsula on your map, that sticks like a sore thumb out of the bottom of a northern continent, is missing in real life. It’s difficult to tell what’s frozen and what isn’t, and it’s not until you get closer that you realize some of the islands are gone too. Did they sink? Did the ocean just rise?

You land in a field, and instantly regret only wearing a single layer. It’s colder than you remember. The ground is uneven, curving into hills and mounds and even mountains in the distance. Tall trees with pointy needles dot the landscape, heavy snow piling on their bows. A couple familiar creatures hop about, but they stand out—clearly not native to the planet. You wonder if anything but plants have survived.

It’s still, silent. A slow, jingling tune would not feel out of place here.

There’s a certain quality to the area that you don’t think you can describe. Something utterly alien, calm but not quite peaceful. It feels more like a dreamscape than a real place, although your goosebumps can testify otherwise.

Kirby’s off and running the second you touch down, but you gesture for him to wait. You’re not even sure where you’re going yet.

“Do you wanna see some buildings?” he asks, much more excited than you feel is appropriate.

“Buildings?”

He points to something behind you, and when you spin around you see it in the distance—large rectangular structures jutting out of the skyline. They’re bright and colorful, a mishmash of pastel hues that offends your sensibilities as an artist, but  _ cheery _ would not be an appropriate word to describe them. They look  _ sick, _ like something is wrong with them, infected by a bubblegum-flavored virus that reduces a real life city to the lookalikes of toys.

“Lots of them are all destroyed and stuff!” Kirby’s saying, and this time you can’t keep him from skipping away, then doubling back when he realizes you’re following much too slowly to keep up. “It’s so cool when you find buildings that are in this good shape… so many in other places are crumbly and burnt!”

“Have you come here a lot?”

“Uh, a couple times. First time around, I didn’t find any ruined stuff… then I looked around, and it’s crazy what you can find! The cities, they’re so big… sometimes you can even find statues buried in the snow, like, uh… there was this big green one with a spiky hat and a book? It was sooo huge; if it had been standing up it would’ve been as big as a building! And oooh, the boats too, there were lots of boats but the sea was all frozen over….”

He continues like that for a little while, and you’re not really listening anymore. Would the scene be different if there were people running about, chatting, entering and exiting? The constant noise of the wind just makes it feel emptier. A perfect, pristine display of plastic models. Nothing moves but the falling snow.

As you approach the city, you become aware of a sound not produced by you or Kirby or any of the various creatures around you—a sort of churning, deep within the earth. It doesn’t register to you until you find its apparent source—a dome-shaped structure with a thick wall around it and two hefty smokestacks, out of which billow dark grey fumes. The smoke disrupts the landscape, breaks the silent spell the entire planet seems to be under. Huge holes, covered by circular sheets of metal, pepper the ground, and from them come the echoing noises of machinery.

“Oh,” says Kirby, and he stops before one of the holes, peering at it as if he can see through the cover and down the shaft below. “It’s another factory.”

“Are there many?”

“Yeah, there are a bunch. It’s crazy how many. And most of them are still working too…”

“Are there—?” Your throat tightens, and you direct your gaze towards the sky, smoke rising higher and higher until it merges with the clouds. “Are there humans down there…?”

Kirby shakes his head, and you let out a breath of relief. (It’s silly, really. It’s not that you’re  _ scared _ of meeting another human in this wasteland. Definitely not.) “Nah, it’s all robots.”

“Wow.”

“Huge robots!! I fought one once!! I dunno how, but they keep the factories moving, all the time…”

It reminds you of what Magolor has told you of Halcandra. But this is something else. You brush the snow off a concrete slab and sit, twisting your fingers together in your lap. You wish Ribbon were here. It feels strange to be without her constant guiding presence.

“Let’s go,” you say, suddenly.

“What—?”

“I want to go home.”

Kirby blinks, sympathetic but not understanding. He glances around at the buildings forming a semicircle around you, then puts on the most carefree smile he can muster, and says, “Isn’t this kinda your home too?”

“No. Definitely not.” Your reply is too quick, too brusque.

“Uh, I mean… you have a connection to this place, right?”

“I…” You look up at the sterile, candy-colored structures around you. Even an eye-hurting red or blue would be better than too-friendly lavender and teal. “No, I, I don’t. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry!” chirps Kirby, but his face has fallen at your clear rejection. “But, uh, you don’t remember living here or anything?”

“I don’t think anyone’s lived here in thousands of years.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

You wonder if Kirby really hasn’t noticed the desolation in the atmosphere, the buildings that look as if they’ve never been alive. You wonder if his kind originated on a planet other than Popstar. You wonder how he would react if he were to visit that place. Would it feel as alien to him as Shiver Star is to you?

You’re about to voice these questions when you hear someone call, “Kirby??”

You spin around, heart pounding. This is not the place you’d expected to meet anyone sentient, let alone anyone who knew who you were. But none other than Francisca is floating towards you, eyes wide.

“Fran!!” cries Kirby, his momentary shock replaced instantaneously with the jubilation of seeing a friend. Clearly the encounter is nowhere near as surreal for him as it is for you. “What are you doing here??”

“I come here sometimes,” says Francisca, then quietly adds, “I like the snow.”

Kirby laughs, high and joyous. “Wow! I can’t believe our luck! I think we were just about to go, but…”

“I wouldn’t mind hanging out for a while,” she replies, as if reading his mind. “If that’s what you wish.”

“Yeah!!” Kirby plops down next to you. The Mage General stays upright, not moving except to inch a little closer to the two of you. “So… do you know a lot about this planet?”

“Many things. It’s got quite a mysterious history.”

“Oooh.” Kirby beams, intrigued. “Did you hear that, Ado?”

“Yeah,” you say. Somewhat ironic, that Francisca should know more about Shiver Star than you.

Your friend holds up the tattered book he found, jabbing at the map with his paw. “Look! Look what we found! This is a book about Ado’s species, and—”

Francisca fixes her cool gaze on you, and your instinct is to shrink back, but you stop yourself. You’ve got no reason to fear her anymore. “That’s right—you’re human, aren’t you?”

You nod, and let out a small breath when her eyes return to the book. She flips through its pages, handling each one carefully, then closes it and sighs.

“Well! Interesting to see another map of the planet before the disasters that brought it to its current state.”

Kirby, enraptured, leans closer. Fran opens the book again, displaying the map.

“I’m sure you noticed the sea level rise when you were coming in. That’s nowhere near as drastic as it was in the past, though. The freezing of the planet made the sea level drop again—because much of that water was converted to ice, you see. Nevertheless, both events had an affect on the shape of the continents as seen from space. You see things like that happening a lot in planets undergoing ice ages,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.

“Ice age?” asks Kirby.

“A period of time when the planet is colder than usual. Although I don’t know if I’d call this an ice age, not in the conventional sense…”

“Do you visit lots of ice planets??”

Francisca blushes. “Is that weird?”

“No, no, you’re like, an ice power mage! You’re just hanging out in your element…” He snickers at his little pun, and Fran’s eyes crinkle in amusement as well.

“I guess they’re also morbidly fascinating to me. After all, how many have died here in the snow like I did?” She says it so casually that you almost don’t question it—but before you can process the implication that Francisca has died before, she’s speaking again. “Well… from what I can tell, most humans left thousands of years ago, before the planet began to cool down. But other animals living here have certainly suffered.”

“Shiver Star wasn’t always cold?” Kirby’s listening intently, ready to absorb any scrap of information Fran has about the ice world. You wish you could say the same of yourself.

“Yes—it was quite hot, for a while, in fact.” She glances back towards the buildings. “If you’re interested… I did manage to find some data on it. Seems like one of these places once housed a team of climate scientists?”

Kirby’s mouth forms an O-shape, his eyes shining. “Ooooh,  _ science… _ let’s go see!”

He jumps up, pulling you along as he follows Fran into the closest building. It’s all white, gleaming like the snow. But the rooms inside show their age—a layer of dust has settled on everything, disturbed sometimes by the footprints of the creatures who have taken over in the absence of humanity.

Francisca pushes some buttons on the wall, and a holographic screen flickers into existence, crackling with static that distorts the image every couple seconds. Given the toy-city-like state the planet seems to be in, it never occurred to you that it might harbor any kind of advanced technology. You watch as some sort of graph appears on the screen, depicting a jagged but steadily rising line. The labels are in a language you can’t read, but the red color makes it look threatening.

“As far as I can tell, this is a graph of the average temperature of this planet, from far in the ancient past, right up until when all the humans left. As you can see, it rose above this threshold here” —she indicates a horizontal line on the graph— “beyond which they thought the damage would be irreversible.”

You squint at it. You’ve never been the best at math, but something isn’t adding up. “Wait, so humans could only live when the planet’s really cold—?”

“Oh, no. This is from thousands of years in the past. It was very, very hot back then. I’m not entirely sure how they got it to heat up that much, honestly. Hot planets are not exactly my strong suit.” She chuckles. “But it looks like something trapped a bunch of heat in the atmosphere.”

Kirby’s been watching Francisca’s entire presentation with a sort of detached curiosity. You don’t think he really understands what’s going on; he’s probably just thinking about his next meal, knowing him. But suddenly, he perks up, pointing a stubby arm at the screen.

“If it was really hot, why’s it so cold now?”

“An excellent question!” Francisca beams, and whisks the two of you outside again, gesturing at the factory before you. Its design is unremarkable, but it still draws your eye as the only part of the landscape that’s in motion. “It all has to do with a phenomenon you see a lot in planets which have undergone nuclear catastrophes. You see all that black smoke? For a while there was so much of it that it blocked out the sky! So the sun couldn’t shine. And, slowly but surely, it cooled the planet down so much that it’s now all frozen like this.”

She folds her hands in front of her, clearly pleased to have an audience for her apocalyptic theories. Honestly, it all sounds pretty farfetched to you—that would have to be a whole ton of smoke. But the sky is indeed a greyish color—probably regular clouds, but you can’t help but notice it in light of this new information. And you can’t shake the feeling that something cataclysmic  _ did _ happen here. The trees all look relatively young, like a forest sprung back after a fire. You’ve got no idea how long ago the humans all left. Long enough for this place to fall into a kind of pristine ruin.

The factory churns on in the background, mindless, autonomous.

“Why did they build the factories?” you ask. They. Not we.

Francisca’s gaze drifts towards the huge structure, and her face darkens with an emotion that you can’t read.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I could never bring myself to go in one.”

“Kirby—?”

He just shrugs.

“Do you think they wanted to make the planet so cold?”

“I doubt it,” Fran replies. “But I do wonder why—and how—they’re still running.”

You recall Kirby’s earlier description.  _ All robots. Huge robots. _ Relics of a forgotten time. Built by the humans? By some other force that took over when they left? For what purpose? To grind away in the same idle pattern until their power source runs out? Until the cold breaks them? Until the chafing of their labor reduces them to dust?

Something about it makes you want to scream. This is your ancestors’ fault, isn’t it? Threw away a perfectly good planet and left it to fade in the worst kind of way.

It is  _ painful _ how much you cannot bring yourself to care.

In a sudden moment of inspiration (or perhaps madness), you roll up your sleeves, kneel down in the snow, and begin to frantically push it away, digging a hole big enough to fit both your hands in. The snow is dense, and it goes deeper than you thought it would, turning to a kind of dirty sludge. It stings. Your fingers turn purple, and then black as you hit a layer of what you think is dark, wet ash. The same color as the smoke overhead.

You stop, shivering, unwilling to go any deeper, hands filthy and knees stained with cold and wet and dirt. Fran looks completely ambivalent to your episode. Kirby watches you with a kind of confusion mixed with awe.

“I want to go home,” you whisper.

Francisca must see the anguish in your face, because her eyes widen, and she reaches out a gentle hand as if to comfort you, then reconsiders and draws it back. “Oh. I’m sorry; I didn’t realize—you’re a human, of course—this is some heavy stuff.”

“Let’s just go,” you plead, and finally Kirby obliges, beginning to trudge back the way you came.

Francisca doesn’t follow, but watches you without saying goodbye.

*

The Warp Star is waiting for you back where you landed, but Kirby doesn’t hop on instantly—he dawdles for a second, even when you’ve caught up.

“Uh, Ado, I’m… I’m sorry for taking you here.”

“What? No, it’s, it’s fine.” Belatedly, you wipe your hands on your skirt, leaving big black streaks. Something to worry about later, you guess. You almost add,  _ you couldn’t have known I wouldn’t like it, _ but that’s not entirely true, is it. He knew the planet was dead. He just wasn’t thinking. It’s okay. You don’t blame him. Not that much.

Kirby looks relieved. His eyes follow the lines of the mountain crests behind you, the thin, young forest, the alien flowers that push through the snow and bloom fully despite the cold.

“Do you think people will live here again someday?”

“Maybe,” is all you have to offer. If you can survive here—if a variety of new species have already made it their home—then yeah, perhaps there’s hope. Maybe it won’t fade into oblivion. But for you, you know it’s going to be a long time before you return.

As you mount the Warp Star, you imagine a crowd of humans waving you off, feet firmly planted in rich, warm soil. A crowd of people who look just like you. And for a second, you almost feel lonely.


End file.
